


Through the Storm

by seaglassgirl



Series: Through the Storm [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016), The Stand - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Apocalypse, Dystopia, Gen, Post-Apocalypse, Superflu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 03:54:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15258843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaglassgirl/pseuds/seaglassgirl
Summary: This is the start of how it all ends...A superflu has decimated the earth's population and those left standing must fight for their lives. Welcome to the new world.





	Through the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> I'm such a big Stranger Things and Stephen King fan it's a little ridiculous. I got this idea after reading the entire unabridged version of "The Stand" and wrote this months ago. I decided to post it after a bit of contemplation. I feel like my writing here is a little different than usual but I hope you all enjoy!

October 4, 1990

 

There was a calmness that overtook Chicago after the riots, gunfire and mayhem ceased. Bodies, rotting corpses that smelled of death and decay, were strewn across the sidewalks, sitting in stalled cars or holed up in apartments across the metropolitan city. That morning, she had decided that the bodies were the worst part of this whole catastrophe: either emitting the unbearable odor that accompanied the superflu, or just rotting, blood leaking from gunshot wounds or cracked skulls on the pavement.

Things had gone from bad to worse in a matter of hours and unlike the dystopian novels she had grown up reading, there was no warning, or slow onset, but the calamity that overtook the country (or perhaps the world? The radios and news broadcasts had stopped a little over twenty hours ago when the power had been cut and it was impossible to tell how far the virus had spread by now) had taken a day at most to reach this level of destruction. People had begun to riot yesterday, at least the people were not sick or the people that were only slightly sick, but something had gone wrong or maybe nothing had gone wrong, and the soldiers that had been stationed in Chicago for only forty-eight hours opened fire and now there was no one left.

Silence engulfed the city and it was that same silence that caused any sound she made to echo loudly through the deserted streets.

Her footfalls echoed along the deserted streets and her panicked breaths seemed like sirens in the foreboding silence. Her gut twisted painfully every time she caught of a whiff of the stench of rotting bodies and despite the fact that she had already thrown up her breakfast, she couldn’t help but feel like she needed to empty her stomach again.

She needed to get the hell out of here.

Her mother had begun packing bags for them a week ago.

“Janie dear, I fear that something horrible is about to happen.” Her mother’s ominous statement had only seemed like the ramblings of a paranoid woman, but now…

Everyone she knew was dead. Her best friends, her teachers, the bus drivers, the man who owned the bagel shop down the street, and her mom were all rotting away in this hell hole.

The sickness had caught by Monday morning and her mom was already bedridden and coughing up gallons of flegm by that night. She knew that she couldn’t leave behind her mother, so she had stayed. It wasn’t so bad at first: she was only making soup and tea for her mother, but as the hours went on, her mother’s brain turned into scrambled eggs.

Jane would never be able to forget the image of her mother in a sweat-soaked nightgown, with dark blood gushing from her nose, screaming for someone to kill her.

Jane needed to leave this city.

At first she had planned to escape to New York and find her half-sister among the wreckage of a destroyed city, but her sister had managed to get in touch with her twenty one hours ago, before the electricity was cut, and Kali had told her in a rushed whisper that New York wasn’t safe. Riots, shootouts, rapists… just to name a few, were all rampant. The same could be said for Chicago.

She had tried to sleep through the night, but every couple of hours a blood-curdling scream would penetrate the silence. She had locked the windows, triple locked the door but somehow she still felt exposed as she pulled the covers over her head and attempted to block out the sobs.

She wondered if screaming was an instinct, or if the people below really thought someone was going to come help them.

The small loaded gun her mother had kept in their apartment was strapped firm to her right leg but she felt her hand shake at the thought of using it.

Which brought back the question of where was safe? Bloomington? Rockford? If her sister had been right, any metropolitan area was going to be in the same state as Chicago and her best bet was finding some small town somewhere where she could camp out for a bit. She wished for Kali to be beside her. She needed some sort of direction.

Catching a flicker of movement in her peripheral vision, she ducked into an alleyway. It didn’t matter if she had a gun strapped to her leg if she couldn’t use it. Only an hour (had it been an hour?) before, she had come across a man still alive, moaning with his neck swelling horribly, blood streaming from his eyes like crimson tears and open sores covering his yellowed skin. The man had screamed and moaned, thrashing about, and she had wanted to run away from the horrible scene but fear had caused her to freeze and watch this man gasp for his last breaths.

Fear was a strange emotion: she had once read about the fight or flight response that the body produced in response to threatening stimuli. In one instance, the person would stay to fight but the other response was to run away.

Jane Ives knew that running was her best option.

However, in that instant, she had stayed. She had no intention of fighting the dying man on the street, but she didn’t run away and the gun strapped to her leg was another example of her tenacity.

Foreign footsteps suddenly interrupted her train of thought. Crouched behind a dumpster in an alleyway that somehow smelled better than the rotting corpses around her, she felt her heart begin to beat faster inside her chest as the footsteps began to get louder and louder.

Reaching quickly but quietly for her gun, she felt her heart begin to pound against her ribcage as the footsteps stopped. There was a shadow blocking the sunlight streaming into the alleyway and Jane forced herself to hold her breath.

“This alley is a dead end so I suggest you come out now.” A woman’s voice commanded, the words echoing off the buildings. Jane squeezed her eyes shut as she realized that the woman was right and there was no escape. She was trapped in an alleyway, crouched behind a dumpster, holding a gun she didn’t even know how to use. She wanted to laugh at the irony of being immune to some deadly disease that had killed her friends- killed her mother in front of her eyes- and instead dying by some other healthy human.

It wasn’t fair.

It was only a week ago that she had run into her mother’s room, screaming because she had just gotten into her top choice university, but now none of that mattered. She was going to die in this alley and become a rotting corpse like the rest of the city had become.

But she wasn’t going down without a fight.

She rose up slowly, the gun pointed in the general direction of the voice, because she had been raised by Terry Ives and Terry Ives taught her daughters to fight.

When Jane emerged from behind the dumpster, she was awed to see a girl, perhaps only a few years older than her, hair up in a ponytail and baseball bat in hand.

And that was how she met Nancy Wheeler.

* * *

 

Mike Wheeler had not expected his week to turn out like this.

Monday morning had started out shitty, with cloudy skies and a chemistry test that reduced his brain to fried mush. He was sure that he failed that exam and he knew that next week when he got his grade back, he was going to have to sit down with his parents and take whatever punishment they deemed fit in order to crack out a better grade from him the next test. However, by Tuesday morning, the super-flu (or the death pox as some people had begun to refer to it) had already infected both of his parents. He had stayed home from school that day to take care of his bedridden parents while his younger sister Holly went to school. By Wednesday, his dad was dead and all the schools were cancelled.

The newscasts had started then: before, all the news stations had only been reporting trivial news: a supreme court case, a new tax bill and a shooting at a school earlier in the week. Now though, most of the news stations had rebelled against whatever entity seemed to have controlled them and he knew that things were bad. One broadcaster was shot on live television as she attempted to warn her views that the government was trying to hide away the truth. (“You have been conned! It was the American government that made this super-flu and it’s the American government that trying to cover it up! You will not get better, you will not recover, everyone infected will-“) Another station had been hijacked by a group of men dressed like members of the Klu Klux Klan who were orchestrating mass executions on live television (“This fucker was once a member of the united states army and now look at him, I’m going to blow his brains out-“). There were more, many more broadcasts like these along with an address from the resident that urged everyone to calm down and remain inside. The President had been sneezing throughout the broadcast and copious amounts of flegm had been ejected with every sneeze and Mike, suddenly overcome with rage, had wished that the fool would die on camera just to prove he was lying.

Mike had watched his dad’s body get carried out on a stretcher Wednesday morning, but by Thursday morning, every the hospital seemed to have been shut down. It was Thursday morning that his sister finally concocted a plan.

“Are you sick Mike?” she carefully asked, her voice strong and clear despite the fear that seemed to emanate from the phone.

“Not sick at all, neither is Holly and it looks like Mom is feeling better too.” He was in the kitchen, warming up leftovers in the microwave while his sister watched the news. He had been trying to turn off the television, especially after the broadcast where soldiers were murdered onscreen, but Holly was insistent about keeping it on.

“I’m not sick either,” she answered in a low voice, “Everyone on my floor is though, and I feel like I need to get out of here. Things are getting bad and the people who aren’t as sick are planning to protest.”

“Protest?” Mike echoed the word, suddenly feeling hollow.

“The army, I guess it’s the army but I’ve never seen those uniforms before, they have blocked every exit out of Chicago. We were told it’s for our safety, to try to contain the virus, but that’s bullshit. The virus is everywhere! A guy from my creative writing class tried to leave yesterday and he was shot on the spot-“

“What the fuck!” Dread polled in Mike’s stomach as the words sunk in. The army was shooting it’s own people now? As if enough people weren’t already dying from this godforsaken flu, now the military was killing it’s own citizens?

“I know, Mike,” she agreed, “Listen, I’m going to try to come to Hawkins… I’ll keep you updated, but I’m going to try to wait it out for a bit. I’m thinking that things are going to get really bad and then clear up, at least a little bit. I don’t want to leave before or during the protests, I’m sure that the army isn’t going to put up with a bunch of kids trying to peacefully protest. Anyway, how is Holly?”

“She’s alright,” he answered as he glanced at his twelve-year-old sister sitting in front of the television, “Won’t stop watching T.V. like she’s glued to the screen. She hasn’t coughed or sneezed once though, kinda like me. I think Dad’s death hasn’t sunk in yet though, so I’m keeping a close eye on her.”

“And Mom?”

“She was delirious when Dad passed, and now she’s sleeping. She was great this morning, ever got up to make herself some tea and everything…”

“What about the Byers?” Mike sighed as the inevitable question came. Nancy had gone to school with Jonathon Byers her whole life and Mike always suspected that there was some romantic aspect between the two, but he never asked. He really didn’t want to know about his older sister’s love life, however, Mike was best friends with Jonathon’s younger brother Will and Mike hadn’t been able to get in contact with him for days.

“The phone line is out, has been for days now and I can’t leave Holly or mom alone. Lucas buried both his parents yesterday and is caring for his sister today and Dustin’s mom got sick last night. We’re all stuck in our houses.” He heard Nancy exhale a shaky breath.

“Jonathon is on his way back to Hawkins, last I heard from him he was crossing the border to Indiana. He started driving days ago and he’s run into a lot of trouble. Weird things like roadblocks and paranoid cowboys with machine guns… I’m really scared something is going to happen to him before he gets there.”

“If you talk to him again, tell him to take the southern entrance into town.” Mike informed her, a sharp edge to his voice.

“Why?”

“All the other roads are either blocked or destroyed.”

“Holy shit,” she breathed, “I’ll tell him next time he calls me. Look Mike, I’m going to come to Hawkins so don’t leave that town. If things get bad, go to the Byer’s cabin in the woods. There’s a spare key in the blue birdhouse in the big tree to the right of the cabin-“

“How do you know that?”

“Me and Jonathon used to spend weekends at the cabin-“

“Oh god Nance…”

  
“Shut it Mike,” she replied, “Look I have to go, I hear gunshots outside and I’m going to hide, but I need you to keep Holly and yourself safe. If mom gets worse, leave her. Things are getting really bad mike. If you have to leave, grab the gun in Dad’s workshop and all of the ammo, also don’t forget to bring all the canned goods you can find. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but please be safe. I love you. Bye-“ The line had cut then and Mike had stood in the kitchen listening to the dial tone for a good fifteen minutes before Holly came over and took the phone out of his hand.

It was now Friday and his mom was good, but a little hysterical. Lucas and his younger sister Erica were now living in the Wheeler house and Dustin was on his way over. If the circumstances had been different, Mike might have been excited to have almost all of his best friends in his house. However, the mood was somber and tense now. The power was out and Mike hadn’t heard from Nancy since her ominous phone call. He had done as she instructed and packed up three backpacks filled to the bring with canned foods and granola bars, medical equipment, flashlights, and a compass, as well as stashed his father’s gun under his pillow.

His mother was cleaning the house now. Washing dishes, hanging up laundry and dusting every old picture frame like the fate of the world depended on her house being spotless. Lucas had begun to engross himself over maps of the United States and his cellular biology books, looking for a place to go or some explanation. Holly and Erica listened to the radio, the classical music that was somehow still being broadcast across the country.

Mike just hoped that Nancy would come before everyone lost their minds.

* * *

 

Jonathon Byers did not consider himself to be a fighter. He liked to blend in and look at things from afar, hence his love for photography. He preferred to not be the center of attention or the focus of the camera, instead opting to take a step back and observe. However, it seemed that the time for observing was over now.

He had been driving for days, switching his car halfway through because all of the gas stations were empty or destroyed and he didn’t think that the corpse sitting in the driver’s seat would call the police. He had called Nancy at every tollbooth he found, but her phone line had gone dead yesterday and now the only option was to hopefully meet her at the cabin.

He hadn’t heard from his mom or brother in a week, but he hoped that they had fled to the cabin early enough to be undetected. It was a long shot to hope that they were both alive and healthy, but it was the only option that he had now.

The problem was that he was navigating his way to Hawkins with only a paper map and every other road he tried to go down was blocked off or literally destroyed. He felt like the world had ended and he was trying to navigate his way through the ruins of the United States. The radio stations had stopped playing news broadcasts yesterday evening. He assumed that the government had shut down all the stations after each one of them began to issue warnings to the American people (“Everyone who is sick is going to die and if you try to leave your city or town you will be gunned down! Do not trust any soldiers you meet! The government created this disease and now they can’t control it so they are killing-“) about how the government was behind the massive destruction.

He had barely listened to the broadcasts; none of it was news to him. The whispers had started two weeks ago and Jonathon had been one of the students to pass out flyers alerting the public that something was coming. Some people had believed him, but others laughed. It didn’t matter now because it was apparent that over ninety percent (or was it more? No one could know for sure) of the population was either dead or dying.

Things were really bad.

He wasn’t sick though. By some miracle, it seemed that he had escaped the virus and so had Nancy. He had no idea why they were oddly immune to the virus that had decimated the population of the world (or was it just America? He doubted that the country had really been able to contain this virus like they had hoped to), but he wasn’t going to think about the fact that he was still healthy for fear that he might already be infected. He had seen his roommate die though and that had been the only thing he needed to see before he decided to book it out of New York.

One of his friends told him yesterday that people were being gunned down now if they tried to leave and Jonathon had thought of the possibility that maybe this driving didn’t really matter. It seemed that things were getting worse and worse as the hours went on and it didn’t matter what someone did anymore because everyone was dying somehow.

But he needed to keep going if not for himself then for his brother and his mom and Nancy.

If everyone else was dead at least he had hope that Nancy was still alive. She had been the first person he called and he still remembered the frantic rambling she had done as he explained to her what the government was covering up. She had believed him, just as she had always done, but it was too late for Chicago. The roads out of the city were already blocked and the chaos was already spreading like wildfire.

He slowed down as another roadblock came into view. The October weather cast a opaque mist on the countryside, but through the fog, Jonathan could spot vultures preying on the flesh of the two bodies left on the road.

He wanted to burn every decaying body until nothing was left but a pile of ash.

* * *

 

Maxine Mayfield was pregnant.

The five pregnancy tests she had taken two weeks prior were her only reliable indicator at this point and it seemed that she was not going to get any prenatal care with the current state of the country. If her mother was not as dead as a doorknob, Max knew that the woman would be throwing an absolute fit over her daughter’s changed situation.

It had been a boy from another high school, someone Max might have thought that she loved, but realized too late that she really didn’t love him and probably never had. Despite their odd relationship, he had asked her to marry him when she told him the news.

Max, a girl with good intentions, was never able to hide her emotions. Her mother used to complain about her daughter’s inability to be polite, but Max really was just terrible at not letting her face betray her inner thoughts. She was sure that when James had asked her to marry him, her face had contorted into some expression of absolute horror. His face, in response, had been one of absolute dejection and then had morphed into anger and betrayal.

None of this really mattered anymore though. Her parents were dead, James was dead, her friends were dead and somehow the pregnant eighteen-year-old girl was somehow alive. It seemed like her life was a running joke when she really sat down and dissected the events that led her to her current predicament.

She had lost her virginity two months ago to a boy she had thought she loved and since then had remained abstinent due to her post-coital distain for said boy. She had been on the pill for a year due to her irregular period and so the boy had not used a condom. After finding out she was pregnant, said boy tried to marry her to which she fervently declined. Then, everyone she knew had gotten sick with some version of the flu and she had spent days watching the news, trying to take care of her bedridden parents and wondering when the new vaccine was going to be available. Her parents had died two days ago, but by that time, their small town had already become a ghost town so she had dragged their bodies out into the backyard and buried them among the tulips in her mother’s garden.

Times were tough.

Despite the tragedy that had enveloped her life, Max knew that she could not waste time sitting around in her parent’s house, waiting for something or someone to come along and pick her up. She had already seen the chaos and horror, but it was only a matter of time before the stragglers, like herself, started wandering in. She knew that being unarmed, in a big house, two months pregnant and in a world with no law or order was a recipe for disaster.

The only destination she could think of was her dad’s home in California. The last time they had spoke he hadn’t been sick and while people were already dropping like flies, both him and Max felt absolutely fine. She had told him on the phone about the bun in the oven and he had been happy, excited even, for her. He also told her where to go to get care and to remain safe.

He was a government hotshot, dedicating his life to science and protecting the common good and Max had a premonition that her father was only still feeling okay because he had known something was coming and taken the correct precautions. However, this also led him to know where the safe houses around the country were located.

Hawkins, Indiana was the closest safe house and the last time they spoke, her father had been in contact with the doctors there. He promised to meet her there, giving directions, plotting a path and making sure she was packing correctly. He stressed the importance of food, water and a weapon. She had taken the pistol her stepfather kept in the house and although she had never fired a gun before, she knew that if it came down to it, she would blow out the brains of anyone who tried to mess with her baby.

Swinging a leg over her stepfather’s motorcycle with a stuffed backpack hanging from her shoulders, she took one look at the cul-de-sac she had grown to call home and said goodbye.

Maxine Mayfield was pregnant and she was on a mission.

 


End file.
